Zadruga

by Margaret Pemberton

‘There may well be,’ his mother interrupted tartly. ‘But it would be most improper for Natalie to take advantage of them.’

  ‘I do not think my mother or father or Julian would think it improper,’ Natalie said swiftly. ‘I always made my own friends in Belgrade and my parents and King Peter never objected to my doing so.’ She thought of Gavrilo and Nedjelko and the Golden Sturgeon and crossed her fingers so that the lie wouldn’t matter.

  ‘London is not Belgrade.’ Lady Fielding’s thin-bridged, faintly aquiline nose took on a white, pinched look as she kept her fury at being spoken to in such a manner in check with difficulty. ‘You are now married to an Englishman and you must adopt English manners and customs.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re being very understanding about this, Mama,’ Edward said gently. ‘Natalie may be married to an Englishman but thanks to this wretched war she’s not going to have the benefit of his companionship for quite some time. If she had been living in London for a little longer it wouldn’t matter so much. Julian would have introduced her to his friends and they would now be her friends. As it is, she has no friends of her own and I think Julian would want her to make some.’

  ‘He wouldn’t wish her to do so unescorted and unintroduced!’

  ‘I’ll escort her,’ Edward said easily, bending down and scooping up an exhausted Bella from where she had been lying at Natalie’s feet. ‘I’ve another three days in town before leaving for my regiment. Three days should be long enough to find out where Serbs meet in London.’ He tickled Bella under her chin. ‘This dog needs a drink. Do you think she would be happy with Lapsang Souchong or should I ring down to the kitchens for a bowl of water?’

  Natalie flashed him a sunny, grateful smile and as he led the way back into the drawing-room for afternoon tea she said chattily, her arm still linked in Diana’s, ‘I’m sure Bella will adore Lapsang Souchong. She is a very well-bred dog and was originally a present from the Tsaravich to Crown Prince Alexander. Sandro had gone to St Petersburg to attend his nephew’s christening. His sister, Hélène, is married to the son of Grand-Duke Constantine. While he was there he became unofficially engaged to one of the grand-duchesses and it was then that the Tsarevich gave him Bella.’

  She and Diana had sat down by now and Diana was staring at her wide-eyed. ‘Crown Prince Alexander is to marry one of the grand-duchesses? Oh, which one? Do tell! And have you been to St Petersburg? Have you met the Tsar and Tsarina?’

  Lady Fielding cleared her throat. ‘I think this conversation is far too frivolous to be in good taste under the circumstances, Diana.’

  ‘What circumstances?’ Diana turned away from Natalie and looked towards her mother. She had very blue eyes and they were now very wide. ‘Because of the war? But Russia and Serbia are our allies! We should be learning all we can about them! And don’t you think it romantic that this little dog was originally the Tsaravich’s? I do. I think it absolutely spendid.’

  Her mother didn’t deign to reply. She didn’t believe one word of Natalie’s prattle about the Tsar and Tsarina and Crown Prince Alexander. The girl was a charlatan as no doubt Julian would eventually discover. He had been taken in by far too obvious physical charms, charms that Lady Fielding found far too exotic to be merely Balkan. Far from believing her daughter-in-law to be a member of the Royal House of Karageorgevich, Lady Fielding was of the opinion that Natalie’s raven hair and sweeping black-lashed eyes were indications she was not even Serbian but Armenian, and most likely Jewish-Armenian.

  Natalie was uncaring of Lady Fielding’s frigid antipathy. Diana was her friend, Edward had become her temporary knight in shining armour and tomorrow he was going to help her make contact with London’s Serbian community. Life was fun and interesting again. She took another cream cake, wondering how she could possibly have allowed herself to become so despondent, wondering if London’s exiled Serbs would regard her as Sandro’s representative and if they would treat her accordingly.

  They treated her with extreme respect, which was profoundly gratifying. Though there was no-one there of her own age group or social class the language spoken was her own. Talk was of nothing but Serbia, of how the Serbian army was rumoured to be holding thousands of Austrian troops at bay across the Danube and the Sava and of how even the arthritically-afflicted King Peter had taken up arms in his country’s defence. By the time Natalie left the church hall in which they met she was more homesick than ever. She didn’t want to be in London, not truly knowing what was happening in her country’s fight for survival, her only news wild rumours. She wanted to be in the heart of Belgrade, as she was sure Katerina still was.

  Over the next few weeks Diana’s friendship was her salvation. Despite her angelic blonde hair and baby-blue eyes she was not classically beautiful as her mother was beautiful. It was her liveliness that gave her the illusion of beauty and it was her liveliness to which Natalie whole-heartedly responded.

  All Diana’s friends were fun and all too many of them were leaving London before Natalie could become properly acquainted with them.

  ‘Cousin John has joined the Derbyshire Territorials, Rupert is with the Gloucester Yeomanry, Charles is training with the Grenadiers at Richmond,’ Diana said despairingly, ticking them all off on her elegantly manicured fingers. ‘There’s going to be no-one left in London soon. Even the girls are dispersing as fast as flies in a thunderstorm. Every mother in the city seems bent on taking a Red Cross hospital or dressing-station to France. The list is endless, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Dudley, Lady Forbes. All the daughters are going too, to nurse. Do you think that’s what we should do, Natalie? Nurse in France?’

  ‘I’d rather nurse in Serbia,’ Natalie said fiercely. ‘It said in The Times that a Dr Elsie Inglis is taking a Scottish Women’s Hospital unit out to Serbia.’

  Diana looked doubtful. Serbia seemed a mite too far away and, lacking the Duchess of Sutherland and the Duchess of Westminster’s throng, not very appealing.

  ‘I think I’d rather nurse in a hospital converted from a chateau or a casino,’ she said with stark honesty. ‘The Duchess of Westminster has set up her hospital in the casino at Le Touquet, among the pine woods. I can imagine myself there. I can’t quite imagine myself in Serbia.’

  Natalie could. She had wept when she had read of how Scottish girls were leaving for her homeland from Southampton. It seemed so unfair that they could go and she, a Karageorgevich, could not.

  All through September her depression increased. September was a wonderful month in Serbia. As she took Bella for desultory walks around Regent’s Park she thought of how plums would be being harvested for slivovitz, how the cattle would be returning from summer pasture, how the peasants in the villages would be celebrating the harvest with feasting, dancing the kolo with wild abandon to the heady music of flutes and violins. Then reality would assert itself and she would look around her at staid English nannies wheeling perambulators and at neat and tidy flower-beds where nothing turbulent or lavish was ever allowed to grow.

  October was worse. In October The Times tersely announced that the trial of those accused of assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife had begun in Sarajevo.

  She scoured every newspaper for days after for further news reports but though there were glaring headlines about Belgian cities falling to German troops and of how a decisive, victorious battle had been fought on the banks of the Marne, there was not a whisper of information about the trial of those who had triggered off the conflagration.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she had wailed to Diana. ‘How can there not be anything in the newspapers?’

  ‘Well I don’t understand it either. Ask Father. He’ll know.’

  Natalie’s relationship with Julian’s father had become, when Lady Fielding was not present, affectionately friendly.

  ‘There won’t be any information to speak of in British newspapers,’ he said to her with gruff gentleness. ‘It’s an Austrian trial and Britain is an enemy belligeren
t. There won’t be any British reporters present in the courtroom, nor will there be any reporters from Serbia, France or Russia. I imagine that the item in The Times was culled from an American newspaper, though I doubt if even the Americans have a correspondent attending the trial. They probably picked it up from an Austrian or German newspaper report.’

  ‘Then how am I to find out what is happening?’ she asked, appalled. ‘How will I know when sentence is passed?’

  He frowned slightly. ‘Does it matter that you know, my dear? I’m rather perplexed as to why you are so concerned. Whatever happens to the young men who sparked off Europe’s present carriage-ride to hell, it can have no bearing on current events. The victory on the Marne is good news of course but poor Belgium is suffering dreadfully. Ghent, Bruges and Ostend have all fallen.’

  Sobs of frustration rose in her throat. Julian had stressed to her long ago the importance of no-one knowing about her friendship with Gavrilo. As a consequence his father had no inkling of it and so there was no way he could understand her passionate need for information. She wondered what he would say if she were to tell him of how very near she had come to being a defendant in the trial now taking place in Sarajevo. Instead she said, ‘How can I get hold of American newspapers?’

  ‘I’m not sure, my dear. I’ll make enquiries of course. What you have to bear in mind is that any newspaper coming from America will be several weeks old by the time it reaches Britain and as the trial has already started it will very likely be over and done with long before you are able to read even an interim report of it.’

  There was nothing she could do but wait in an agony of suspense for The Times to receive more information on the trial from The New York Times. She wondered how long she would have to wait; how long the trial would last.

  It was the first week in November when the bald announcement that Gavrilo Princip, Nedjelko Cabrinovich, Trifko Grabez, Civijetko Popovich and Vaso Cubrilovich had all been found guilty of treason and murder. Gavrilo, Nedjelko and Trifko had been sentenced to twenty years in prison, Vaso Cubrilovich to sixteen years and Civijetko Popovich to thirteen years. Danilo Ilich, also listed as an assassin, and four of the plotters’principal helpers were found guilty of treason and being accessory to murder and, being over twenty years of age, had been sentenced to death by hanging.

  By the time she had finished reading her hands were trembling so much that the newspaper fell from her fingers. Who were the ‘principal helpers’who had helped her friends and who were now going to hang? Who were Civijetko Popovich and Vaso Cubrilovich? She had never heard of either of them, nor had she ever heard Gavrilo mention Danilo Ilich by name.

  She hugged her arms wishing Julian was with her. Julian knew how nearly her name had come to being listed with those of the ‘principal helpers’, how very nearly she had come to standing trial on charges of being an accessory. He would understand the mental and emotional trauma she was now undergoing and he would, as always, be able to comfort her. But wishing that Julian was with her was a futile exercise. He wasn’t with her and he wouldn’t be until his officer training was completed and he had leave before being posted to France.

  At night, alone in the brass-headed bed they had shared so joyously, she cuddled Bella and tried to ward off nightmares by remembering that Gavrilo and Nedjelko and Trifko were not among those who were going to be hanged.

  It was at night, also, that she most missed Katerina. All their lives they had shared a bedroom, giggling and gossiping together in the darkness before going to sleep. Now she had only Katerina’s letters for company and they were often so delayed in arriving that she could never be sure if her mother and Katerina were still nursing or even if they were still in Belgrade.

  For hour after hour she would lie in the darkness, comforted by the sound of Bella’s gentle breathing, trying to imagine what was taking place at home, wishing she were there, wishing the war was over and that she could return.

  By December she had even more to think about. Julian had written to her, telling he was leaving for France in a month’s time and would be home for five days prior to sailing. Not only was she fervently looking forward to seeing him again, she had something quite momentous to tell him. Something about which she didn’t truly know whether to be pleased or appalled. She was going to have a baby.

  Chapter Eleven

  As the sound of shelling intensified Katerina and Zita ran out into the courtyard. They weren’t the only ones anxious to know from which direction the bombardment was coming. Windows in the maids’quarters were being thrown open and the butler and two footmen ran outside hard on Katerina and Zita’s heels.

  ‘The Austrians are trying to cross the Sava, ma’am,’ the butler said tautly, echoing Zita’s own immediate assessment of the situation. ‘If they succeed the city will be overrun within an hour. Perhaps if we evacuated now, ma’am …’

  ‘No.’ Zita had made her mind up long ago about what action she would take if the city were overrun and evacuation did not feature in her plans.

  One of the maids clustering at the windows began to cry and another sobbed hysterically, ‘We’re going to be killed! We’re all going to be raped and killed!’

  A barrage of shellfire rained down on what Zita judged to be the Kalemegdan Gardens and she turned and looked towards the terrified faces crowding the open windows. Girls frightened half out of their wits were going to be a hindrance to her in the hours and days ahead, not a help, and she said to the still anxiously hovering butler, ‘If any of the household staff wish to leave tell them they may do so.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. And yourself and Miss Katerina, ma’am? For Miss Katerina’s sake perhaps it would be better if …’

  ‘No,’ Zita said again firmly and as she did so she was aware of a new, ominous sound merging with the thunder of exploding shells. It was the sound of hoof-beats and iron-rimmed wheels hurtling over cobbles. For a brief moment she wondered if she was behaving irresponsibly in choosing to remain in a city that was bound to be eventually overrun. She looked across at Katerina about to suggest, for her sake, that perhaps they should leave for Nish.

  Katerina’s eyes met hers. ‘Should we make our way to the hospital now, Mama?’ she asked, her eyes resolute, her voice perfectly steady.

  Another flurry of shells came screaming over the city from the Hungarian banks of the Danube. This time they landed fearfully near, somewhere in the vicinity of Terazije Square.

  Despite the horror they were caught up in a small smile touched the corners of Zita’s mouth. In a terrifying situation she and her daughter were in fundamental agreement with each other and it was a gratifying sensation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, turning and beginning to walk back into the house. ‘We’d better go on foot. I don’t want to put the horses at risk.’ She turned to her unhappy butler. ‘Make sure all the grooms are down at the stables. The horses must be terrified by the noise and they’ll need reassuring and soothing. Tell the maids they can leave at any time but that while there is a bombardment they are safer in the house than out on the streets. And tell them to shut their windows and to draw their curtains so that if the windows are blown in they won’t be injured by flying glass.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And have the cellars opened up. There are going to be hundreds of people fleeing the east of the city looking for whatever shelter they can find.’

  ‘But the wine, ma’am!’ the butler protested in horror. ‘If city riff-raff shelter in the cellars not a bottle will be safe!’

  ‘And not a bottle will be safe if the Austrians overrun us,’ Zita retorted tartly. ‘I’d rather the wine was drunk by fellow citizens than by Austrian troops!’

  As they stepped into the chandelier-lit entrance hall Katerina said, ‘We could turn the ballroom into a public shelter as well, it wouldn’t be as safe as the cellars but it would hold a vast number and be far safer than the streets or the wood houses down by the Sava.’

  ‘And if enough kitchen staff volunteer
to stay we can provide soup,’ Zita said, determining that if the kitchen staff fled she would make it herself. She turned again towards her dazed butler. ‘Get Laza to supervise the preparing of the ballroom. Tell him that everything flammable should be removed and heavy material pinned over the mirrors and windows.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. At once, ma’am.’

  As he hurried off to do her bidding two stolidly calm figures stepped forward. ‘If you’re going down to the hospital tonight, I will come with you,’ Helga said flatly, a white, capacious apron tied over her serviceable gown as an indication that she was ready to undertake any task asked of her, no matter how bloody.

  ‘And I shall come too, of course,’ a less phlegmatic voice said with equal firmness.

  Both Zita and Katerina stared at Miss Benson as if she were an apparition. As Natalie’s governess she had had no tasks to perform since the day Natalie had accompanied them to Sarajevo. Zita never liked dismissing anyone and she had had too much on her mind to think of dismissing the quiet young Englishwoman who had striven diligently and in vain to further Natalie’s classical education. She had simply assumed that Miss Benson would be looking around for alternative employment and that when such employment was found, she would then say her goodbyes.

  Now she said doubtfully, feeling guilty for not having encouraged Miss Benson to return to Britain while it was safe for her to do so, ‘Conditions are going to be extremely unpleasant in the hospital and the streets are very unsafe …’

  ‘Just as they no doubt are in Bruges and Ostend and other cities the Huns and their allies are reducing to rubble,’ Miss Benson said with asperity, her mousy hair pulled neatly off her face and secured in a bun, her hazel eyes resolute. ‘I’m an Englishwoman and if I were not here, but home in Lincolnshire, I would be volunteering for a nursing unit in Flanders. As I’m not home, and not likely to be for some time, I shall nurse Serbian soldiers and civilians instead of Belgian and French soldiers and civilians. We’re all allies together, aren’t we?’